patiently awaiting petrichor
by procras-tea-nation
Summary: It's a surprisingly redolent day in the summer. (Warning: self-harm, suicidal Sam.)


**Warning: Self-harm. Definite trigger**. Please, _please_ do not read unless you can handle it. This is **not** romanticizing it.

Previously a Creative Writing assignment.

* * *

It's a surprisingly redolent day in the summer.

Dean's asleep on musty motel sheets.

Sam is sitting against the bathtub on the tile floor, red cracking in contrast against albicant purity.

He watches in rapt ebullience as the hematic liquid beads over a thin trail on his wrist. It's fascinating. He lifts a lithe hand and drags the metal across the sarcoline skin. A longer path than the one above it. Holding his breath, he catalogs the steady ripple of blood that follows the blade. He feels something like peace.

He catalogs that, too.

Momentarily experimental, Sam presses the blade in deeper, and shakily exhales a steady stream of air as he moves it, inexplicably fast, along his arm. It's impossibly odd, and wonderful. His hair raises in satisfaction, and then reels from the sting. It's scary, and yet; Sam's discovered a personal panacea.

He glances at the door, self-conscious. Vision diaphanous. Dean's desultory snoring vaguely registers before Sam quietly and keenly cuts down the length of his forearm. Each time his teeth chew on his bottom lip to trap the sounds in his mouth. He makes it to his elbow before a numbness seeps up into his fingers, and he drops his arm on the floor. Vermillion lines like veins. He lets the blade fall in his lap.

Sam enfolds himself in the feeling, drunk off his body's response, the lilt, the warmth, the blood the blood the blood. Cuts and scrapes are so innocent and misplaced until you assign them an emotion. He closes his eyes and sees his pulse, perfect and tangible. He's been crying but it's impossible to pinpoint when it began. It's an ephemeral ambiance, and Sam sighs himself into reality.

He hears a pounding and it etches in his ribs. Crashing from a high too fleeting to be fair. Mellifluous tapping, pins and needles dancing up the marks on his arm, louder, louder—

Dean's fervent knocks against the door startle Sam, contract him awake.

"Sam? Sam?! Sammy?! Sammy, open up!"

Sam's breath comes up short and he gasps back, "Yeah! Y-yeah, Dean, I'm fine, I'm fine."

_I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine _he thinks and for the first time in his life he knows nothing could ever be farther from the truth. He can feel Dean pausing, straightening his shoulders, cocking a familiar eyebrow.

"Alright, well—I gotta take a piss so hurry up in there, okay?"

"Yeah, sorry, I just—I'm gonna take a quick shower."

"Quick as in filming your L'Oreal commercial or actually quick?"

"Actually quick, Dean," Sam breathes, and eyes the pool of blood on the floor.

"Okay," Dean murmurs, and Sam knows Dean's wary but he's not going to ask. He's suddenly thankful for the insouciant strain of their relationship. "Next time just hop right in instead of looking at yourself in the mirror all day," Dean yells, and it should've made Sam laugh but all it did was pinch a nerve and make him choke back a relentless sadness. His clothes are free from the kiss of any erythraen hue, and he folds them carelessly on the seat of the toilet. He forces a laugh, for Dean, because Dean needs to know Sam's okay, and then he twists the shower handle. The water smells like mildew, and Sam thinks of all the times he patiently awaited petrichor after morning thunderstorms. Dean by his side, coaxing worms out of the ground only to smash them with the heel of his boot. Laughter and disregard for a small, apparently meaningless life. Before they knew what it meant to protect and to save.

When the replacement rainwater hits his arm, he winces from the burning pain. He watches the stains flow effortlessly off his skin, lissome and thin like ribbons. The marks sear pale-pink under the fluorescent light. He cries a second time and lets his palms press against the wall for balance. Hot shower water chlorine-stings his spine, his body bent forward in a question-marked line.

He turns the knob and pushes the shower curtain back. His eyes are the only dry part of him. Methodically he gets dressed, calm and sure of himself. Sam wets a few tissues under the faucet and soaks up the blood on the floor. He frowns when he sees the discoloration in the grout, but knows something like that is bound to escape Dean's attention. The razor gets discarded in the trash bin, and Sam gives the bathroom one last look. He stuffs the tissues in his jean pocket, and mussing a towel through his hair, opens the door to see Dean squirming in his chair.

"Jesus, finally," Dean barks, and makes a beeline for the door. Their shoulders brush and Sam's stomach feels gutted, like Dean knows, like he saw the marks, the red in Sam's eyes, on Sam's shirt. But he didn't—the door is closing and Sam is standing, towel in hand, arm pulsing beneath his sleeve. A few cuts have reopened, he can feel them, but they haven't bled through. Dean didn't notice. Dean never notices.

Sam sits on the motel bed. Emptiness shrouds the room, and he can barely remember his dalliance with death. A few nights ago he tried with scissors; then he realized that dismantling a shaving razor would result in a thinner cut. He'd never imagined following through. He told himself he was going to take it apart just to see if he could. Observe a possibility. Not create a reality. Yet there he was.

Dean opens the door and loudly proclaims, "Feels good to open the flood gates!" His crooked smile glints in the light and Dean crosses to his laptop on the table. Sam doesn't laugh, and Dean takes it personally. "You sure you're alright?" Aggravated, Sam curtly replies, "Yeah, Dean, I'm fine." Sam doesn't always want to laugh. Every time he doesn't, it must be that Sam is brooding or Dean must have fucked up—it's never just that Dean—possibly, maybe—_isn't funny_.

Dean decides he's going to follow a lead on the case; and while Dean is gone, off to proposition booze and women, Sam will sit on the floor and carve kermes colored roads above the throbbing map beneath his skin.

* * *

i know it's not everyone's cup-o'-tea, but-a few words would mean a lot to me. thanks for viewing.

tentatively,

geenon

**p.s**

**to anyone who may or may not be inquiring, "is that it?": yes. no. who knows. but if there are no other chapters right now, then "that's it" in this present moment in time. thanks.**


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